Digital Birdy

Kid A

Sitting at home slightly drunk after too many wines with some of my wife’s fellow ministers on a Friday night and watching hipster try hards on Rage attempting to be all arty and serious and largely failing to be musical. 

Which sent me on a YouTube search through my past and present and led me here, to where the transition to liking music without preconceptions began. 

I thought I was SO into music, during the 1990’s in particular, listening to such a diversity of bands. Really, I was living in monocultural musical cu-de-sac. Of Pearl Jam vs Nirvana and Indie vs Mainstream, then Radiohead and Tortoise vs the world (circa 1997). (Which reminds me of the time I went to see The Cure in 1992 with 15,000 other Robert Smith clones. Truly together alone.) And it seemingly continues today - in our battle to be unique, cool and edgy, we are (with the rare exception) united in our spectacular failure to be interesting. 

This song broke it open a little for me. Kid A. I thought OK Computer was the greatest thing ever, as soon as I heard it in 1997. But I can still remember the sensation of wanting this album soooooooo bad, getting it home, putting the cans on in that tiny shitty room in that house in Richmond and feeling my world literally crumbling with each difficult, beautiful note of this incredible song. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. 

Or since, because those naive ears can never be cracked open like that again.